1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic image-capturing apparatus having the user verification function.
2. Description of the Related Art
The increasingly widespread use of digital cameras and the advances in Internet technology have facilitated the handling of digital images so that they can be transferred to another party by electronic mail or the like with ease in recent years. One of the characteristics of digital images is that they can be reproduced or processed without degrading of image quality. In other words, images that another person owns can easily be used without his authorization as if they were owned by oneself. A great deal of concern regarding the issues of copyright and illegal tampering with images has resulted in the development of digital watermarking technology whereby information is invisibly incorporated in the image itself without compromising the quality of the digital image.
A copyright holder employs a special system such as a personal computer to achieve digital watermarking for embedding inherent information that asserts the copyright into the image information of an image obtained by performing a photographic operation on a digital camera in the prior art.
However, when such a system is utilized, digital watermarking information of a party other than the true copyright holder may be input into a photograph. Thus, there is a problem in that a person holding the copyright in the true sense cannot be identified.